


Satisfaction Brought It Back

by comicroute



Category: Batman (Comics), Catwoman - All Media Types, Robin: Son of Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Catlad, Catwoman to the rescue, Damian Wayne is Catlad, Damian needs love, Damian vs. Cats, Family, Fluff, Gen, Humour, someone needs to RAISE this boy, someone needs to teach this boy what the meaning of family is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:20:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comicroute/pseuds/comicroute
Summary: “Kitten, no one should ever do something like this alone.” Really, Damian has no idea what she might be talking about, but she continues anyway with a soft smile and the slow, gentle cascade of her hair sliding forward as she bends down to his level. She crouches there for a moment, kind eyes looking over Damian’s face, before she straightens up again and moves her fingers to gently nudge at Damian’s shoulders, a harmless pressure. “How about we go talk about it over a cup of warm milk first?”Damian has no idea what possesses him to follow Selina back down to the drive, but suddenly his shoes are crunching over gravel and he’s admiring the way Selina can walk on these loose stones with her high heels and still look like royalty. Subjectively, he realises that the grip around his heart loosens with every step he takes away from that towering manor.____(Instead of going to the Wayne Manor and officially introducing Bruce to his existence, Damian Wayne is found by Selina Kyle, and becomes her partner-in-crime).





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've always had this love for Damian Wayne as Catlad in the back of my head without ever having read a fic of it, but I just recently watched the episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold where Alfred basically writes a fanfiction about Bruce and Selina getting married and having Damian, and my heart broke, and I realised I couldn't resist it anymore.
> 
> I promise I haven't ditched my other fics! I'm in the middle of new chapters for both of them, I promise.
> 
> To clarify what's going on: Talia basically ditches Damian on the Wayne Manor doorstep in an attempt for Damian to not only ‘disrupt’ the Batman’s plans, but also for him to act sort of like a spy (which all leads back to disrupting Batman’s...plans? Mission? Whatever). Talia, in my head, is no mother whatsoever. Canonical evidence can fight back all it wants, in my opinion Talia doesn’t give a shit about Damian and neglected him. I also just hate her in general. On top of that, Damian doesn’t actually want anything to do with Batman. Had Damian been taken into the Manor, that would have changed. But he just thinks Batman is an idiot here. An admittedly dangerous idiot, because he’s very capable but refuses to kill, which is really the simplest solution to life’s problems, in Damian’s opinion.
> 
> Finally, please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Standing in front of the towering, polished exterior of the imposing manor, seeming as impenetrable as if it had risen from the ground itself, Damian refuses to admit to nerves.

Mother had left him some time ago, kilometers down the lush landscape flanking the Wayne driveway. She had left him without a word other than what Damian had already heard before, and plenty of times over. She had left him without anything but a mission, one that Damian fully intends to fulfill and then return to his room, his training, and his…

But the bravado he had been building in himself suddenly feels like fluff, like cotton that looks large until it’s flattened to reveal everything within it was truly just air. Of course, the point of this entire ordeal is for Damian to prove himself (he’s sure of this), so logically, that should imply that Damian will be put into a situation he is not overly familiar with.

Objectively, it’s a wise move. But he knows, deeply, more prominently than before, that once he knocks on these foreboding oak doors (no more luxurious than what Damian himself is used to, no more cold or imposing or dangerous, but more strange, odd and unfamiliar), he is diving into deep water. He will be playing a role he suddenly realises he is loathe to fill, because Damian has never been one much for lying, or spying, or anything covert in general. It’s much more satisfying to take action, not sit and listen and wait, wait. He can, of course. He is fully capable of inaction. All he has to do is confirm that for Mother.

He has seen pictures and videos of the Batman. But Mother doesn’t speak of him (doesn’t speak to Damian in general), and Damian doesn’t hear of him except for Grandfather’s mad comments, offhanded remarks of the happenings of Gotham City and Father’s  _ fool’s errands.  _ He has been raised knowing his heritage, but his mother’s fascination with the man is something Damian can’t fathom. He knows of the Batman’s accomplishments, but between the lines, Damian can read his failures. Truly, Batman’s ‘code’ must be doing more harm than good. After all, it looks to Damian that Gotham still has the same villains and problems as it had before Batman. Is it really necessary for Damian to be trained by him? Shouldn’t Damian be teaching  _ Batman  _ the advantages to simple ends?

This is all seems like more trouble than it’s worth, Damian considers as he stands and scowls at the large oak doors. But no, his purpose here isn’t to second guess Mother’s desires. It’s merely that… Well, it’s merely that once Damian starts this mission of his, he isn’t quite sure when it’s going to end.  _ If  _ it will ever end. He has the strangest notion that if he steps off this stone porch, he’s leaving something behind. Mother never said anything, but Damian is starting to feel as if this isn’t a mission at all. She never told him how to eventually end this. Damian doesn’t know if he’s fulfilling a duty, or…

“And who might you be?” comes the lilt of an amused feminine voice behind him. For the strangest second, Damian is struck with the thought that Mother must be back to fetch him, but even before turning around he knows that Mother would never sound so soft.

The woman behind him has dark features, not as dark as Mother’s but maybe more like Damian, though Damian suspects her skin is more pale. Her eyebrows are perfectly shaped, not filled, and he finds it odd that this is what he notices first. They frame eyes that are a swirl of colour, more colour than Damian sees in the eyes of those he trains with and those who train him, in Asia and the Middle East, green where there is normally brown so dark the pupils disappear. Her brown hair is wavier than Mother’s, curling gently around her collarbone and the glittering necklace around her neck with bangs swept off to the side, and though bold like Mother is, she is far more...lenient, perhaps. Her posture seems flexible, but tall with shoulders set back. It isn’t elegance in coiled power like Mother, but elegance and grace nonetheless, where it seems that the diamonds on her neck should be honoured to lay against her subtly olive skin instead of the other way around.

“I am Damian...Wayne, heir of Bruce Wayne. Who are you?” his question comes out more demanding than hers, which had been more like a suggestion leaving choice on whether or not to answer accordingly than a true request. He catches himself at the last moment, remembers to change his last name to Wayne and instantly loathes it, feeling that Wayne is a name lesser than the one he had before. He has never had an issue with announcing his status before, but in this new world where he may not be permitted to truly demonstrate the proof of his name, he has been told it is best to tuck it away. However, for Damian, it feels less like he’s hiding his name in safety and more as if he’s hiding his name in shame.

The woman looks surprised, but Damian suddenly can’t read what kind. “Another Wayne?” she muses thoughtfully, and Damian bristles because what does that mean, another? There is only one other, and that is his Father. “I’m Selina.” She smiles.

Selina. No surname. Damian eyes her suspiciously, because how can he be certain as to who this woman is if she has no lineage? Damian doesn’t respond, as she has asked nothing of him, or given anything worth him prompting, but maybe he was expected to say something because there’s a pause that follows where Selina leaves him room to speak. He doesn’t take it.

“So, where did Brucie pick you up, kitten?”

Damian scowls at her. Deforming his Father’s name like that is disgraceful. He goes to protest that his name is Wayne, not kitten, but decides that he doesn’t want to be called Wayne, and that cats are rather graceful creatures, and he prefers being called after something graceful than the fool that is Bruce Wayne. He deigns not to correct her on that matter. “Father did not  _ pick me up,”  _ he responds. “I have come here of my own accord.”

Her smile is threatening to grow wider, Damian can see the way her lips twitch at the corner. He tries rising up better to his full height because he doesn’t know what’s so funny.

It drops when Damian turns back to the door and says, “He has yet to know who I am.”

“Oh,” Selina says, so softly that if Damian weren’t as well trained as he is, he would have missed it. They stand in silence for a few more moments, the chirp of birds in the trees yards away the only melody in the air. Steeling himself, Damian strides forward and raises a fist to knock-- “Wait,” continues Selina, and Damian doesn’t know how that makes him stop. He has never allowed anyone to stop him before. But, perhaps, he wants to. He slowly lowers his hand. “Why are you all alone?”

What? He narrows his eyes at her, daring her to continue, but doesn’t know if he wants her to or not. “Why should I not be?”

Selina narrows her eyes right back, but not threateningly, not like Damian is. She’s scrutinising him, not for lies, but for something to dig up and give her answers. She comes forward and rests a gentle palm so slightly on his shoulder that if he weren’t watching, he might not know it was there. He has the instinctive urge to knock it away, but decides to steady himself into a deadly stillness instead, in case she has ulterior motives for the gesture. “Kitten, no one should ever do something like this alone.” Really, Damian has no idea what she might be talking about, but she continues anyway with a soft smile and the slow, gentle cascade of her hair sliding forward as she bends down to his level. She crouches there for a moment, kind eyes looking over Damian’s face, before she straightens up again and moves her fingers to gently nudge at Damian’s shoulders, a harmless pressure. “How about we go talk about it over a cup of warm milk first?”

Damian has no idea what possesses him to follow Selina back down to the drive, but suddenly his shoes are crunching over gravel and he’s admiring the way Selina can walk on these loose stones with her high heels and still look like royalty. Subjectively, he realises that the grip around his heart loosens with every step he takes away from that towering manor.

* * *

He doesn’t tell her everything. In fact, compared to what there is to tell, Damian doesn’t tell her much of anything at all. But he suspects that she understands, and that she must have plenty of secrets of her own.

They’re sitting in a bookstore’s coffee and tea shop in a rich part of Gotham that Damian can’t name, but which has very well dressed people bustling outside. The shop is on the second floor, with the bookstore on the first, and considering it’s noon on a Tuesday that means there is hardly anyone up here to bother them. Selina claims they came here because this is the only place that will serve them warm milk with honey, despite it not being on the menu. Damian oddly finds himself not minding it.

It takes coaxing for Damian to open his mouth to begin with, but none of the verbal kind. Simply the coaxing made when there is a person across from you who joins you in looking out the window at the rain starting to splatter down unhappily to the streets below with steam rising from their mug and contented smile on their face at the wonders of the world, although Damian sees nothing to wonder at except a smoggy sky and dreary buildings weary with the weight of an unfortunate existence.

He briefly recalls the village he had often visited when he was done with his training in the Caucasus mountains, the clear sky and the open markets of food that squished under his thumb, with berries that would melt on his fingers. They weren’t friendly people, but they had good food, and the children didn’t mind who kicked a ball with them as long as they were skilled and spoke their language, although Damian had never joined. They were people like himself, wary of strangers, but in a different way that this world is. Back there, the hot sun beating on his shoulders is what made him tired, not the lull of crying clouds.

He tells Selina, curtly, that Mother had left him in front of the manor to meet Father for himself, but all Selina asks is if Mother is coming back. He tells her no before he truly thinks about it, and catches the word only after it’s out of his mouth and suddenly he’s wondering at it’s existence, at where it came from and what it’s doing dancing with  _ that  _ question.

“Do you want to be with your dad?” she asks after ordering a croissant.

“Of course. He is my father.”

She smiles sadly. “But do you  _ want  _ to live with him?”

“I--” Damian blinks, eyes darting to watch the pattern of the honey swirl in his milk. “I have never met him.”

“Would you like to?”

“No”--and there it is again. But why, he can’t say. He hopes Selina won’t ask and, miraculously, she doesn’t. Why doesn’t he want to meet his father? What is it that is giving him this feeling of dread?

The croissant comes, and Selina gently tears it in half with her clinking maroon nails, offers him one part of it. He takes it and begins slowly shredding it to pieces. “How old are you, little stray?”

Damian’s head snaps up with a frown. “I am not a stray,” he says automatically. Strays are the dishonoured, disgraced mangled cats and dogs that scavenge horrifically in the trash for food, the unwanted and unclaimed animals with no home to go to, no-- “I am ten years of age,” he continues quickly with a swallow.

“Gotham isn’t a fun place for a ten year old,” Selina continues thoughtfully. “And I have an awfully big home. Three different guest rooms you can pick and choose from. What do you say to staying with me, just for tonight?”

Damian, logically, knows that staying at the house of a stranger he met perhaps an hour ago isn’t the most wise decision he has ever made. But for all that Batman is foolish, Damian doesn’t truly believe a foe would be standing on his doorstep dressed in heels and a smile, and he is fairly certain he can handle himself. After all, he is Damian Al Ghul  _ and  _ Damian Wayne, the son of Talia Al Ghul and Bruce Wayne, grandson of Ra’s Al Ghul, rightful heir to the throne. He has nothing to fear.

* * *

The house is actually a luxurious penthouse fit for a queen, where everything sparkles like diamonds and overlooks the entire city, a vantage point to be marvelled at. Up here, Damian doesn’t feel like he truly lost anything, like he is fully in control of what happens below him but at the same time far enough removed that it doesn’t bother him. Though still braced for battle, he finds it relaxing. Unfortunately he’s still tense enough that when he feels something brush against his leg he instinctively kicks out and there is a loud screech as something hits the wall.

Selina is staring at him with wide-eyed alarm. Damian is staring at the cat. “Isis!” she calls empathetically, and Damian watches incredulously as she approaches the hissing cat that looks ready to claw her face off, yet after more soothing tones and outstretched palms, the cat, presumably Isis, allows herself to be picked up and rocked in Selina’s arms.

All of a sudden, seeing at there has been no permanent damage done to the cat, Selina looks amused. “Maybe I should have warned you about the cats. There’s another one that lives here, but honestly, a ton more that come and go.” Her amusement turns back to alarm very quickly. “You’re not allergic, are you?”

“No,” Damian says immediately, still staring at the cat.

Selina then slowly approaches him, cat in her arms, who looks at Damian as if he is Satan on earth. “Cats have a very good memory,” she informs him, still softly petting Isis. “Wrong them once, and they won’t trust you for the rest of their lifetime. You sure made a great first impression. But Isis is special, and she knows you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have some element to be trusted.” Then, Selina nudges the cat slightly higher in her arms, presses up to Damian until they’re almost touching, and offers the cat to him.

“No,” Damian repeats on autopilot as he regards the cat as if it’s alien. But Selina is persistent, and suddenly Damian is holding a black cat awkwardly away from his body, his hands under its shoulders, watching as it hisses at him.

Selina laughs, and it sounds like bells. “Not like that, kitten,” she gently chastises, and then takes Isis again and demonstrates how Damian should hold her, and before Damian feels like he can prepare himself he suddenly has an armful of a fluffy breathing creature and its whiskers feel so weird against his chin and he does not like this at all.

“What--” he croaks as its eyes whip around to stare at him. He watches it warily. “What do I... _ do _ with it?”

“Try petting,” Selina calls from what must be the kitchen.

Isis is still watching him. “You do not like me much, do you?” he asks it. Its ears twitch.

When Selina comes back with two mugs, he asks, “How can it tell whether or not it can trust me?”

“Her,” Selina corrects. “Isis is a lady.” She sets the mugs down on the coffee table. “Cats are independent and mysterious. They do what they want when they want to and they don’t have to trust anyone for any reason if they don’t feel up to it. But when they do decide to trust, and especially to forgive, there’s always a reason they have, whether or not you ever find out what that reason is.”

When Damian sits down, Isis jumps off his lap immediately into Selina’s. But when they’re both half way through their mugs -- hot chocolate, Selina tells him, which he has never had and tries not to look too curious about so as not to reveal that fact -- she hesitantly crawls back and curls onto his thighs. Selina eventually leaves to go set up a guest room, leaving Damian to stare down at the softly rising and falling bundle of sleek black fur in front of him.

He awkwardly reaches a hand down, unsure of where to place it, and tries the top of her head. She shifts a little, lifts her chin up, but then tilts into his hand with a contented purr, and Damian doesn’t think he’s ever felt something so soft in his life.

* * *

 

Staring at the gleaming white ceiling the next morning, lying in a bed perhaps even softer than that of the one he slept in Nanda Parbat, Damian determines his plan of action.

He will leave. That much is obvious. The front door is simply around a corner and down the hall. Damian has never met anyone outside of the League who wakes up as early as he does. The sun has yet to rise. He will be gone before Selina will realise anything is amiss. It shouldn’t be at all difficult to catch a cab. There is a possibility Mother has yet to discover that Damian had not, in fact, entered the Batman’s territory the day before, if she had left as swiftly as she had been clearly planning to. Damian can correct his mistake, his moment of weakness, and act as if nothing odd had occurred. What will happen when he faces Father for the first time, Damian is uncertain, but that is a thought for the next hour. As of this moment, Damian must find his clothes, because he had refused to wear his day clothes to bed and Selina had given him a silk robe to wear as a substitute of sleeping garments, and then he must be on his way before the sun has the chance to awaken the woman sleeping across the hall.

He locates his daily attire in the laundry room and makes swift work of discarding the robe. He isn’t worried about remaining silent. Surely a regular, upperclass civilian will be unable hear the light, even if currently careless, feet of a member of the League. The penthouse isn’t silent, either. Damian can hear the distant sounds of a city coming to life, honks cutting through the air as white noise only because the penthouse is high enough in the air to not be overly disturbed. From his peripheral, he can see the Gotham River gleam like beaten copper.

When he turns the corner in order to reach for the door, he’s surprised to feel his currently shoeless toes press into something soft and pliant. He looks down.

It’s another cat, this one much larger and fatter than Isis, with fur far more fluffy than sleek, sticking out in all directions like ruffled downy feathers. It’s belly is snow white with a back blotched in random patterns of cream and browns. It’s stretching out all its paws now, having been disturbed from its sleep, directly over the path Damian is planning to take to get to the door.

Damian frowns. “Why don’t you sleep somewhere more proper?” he demands. The cat doesn’t answer. “Honestly, this is shameful. The floor is filthy.” Probably isn’t, considering how clean this penthouse is. But it’s the thought that stands. Floors are where people step, not sleep. “Treat yourself with more respect.”

The cat imprudently continues with its actions. Damian goes to step over it, but really, the floor is no comfortable thing. He turns around then, having decided, and awkwardly attempts to pick the cat up. It’s harder than he expected, because he wasn’t planning on the cat to be like  _ taffy --  _ his original estimates on its size were inaccurate because it stretches to twice its length when he lifts it by under its arms. It startles and begins to shift around, kicking its legs, so Damian quickly runs back to his room, cat legs dangling in front of him, before it can decide to fight back. He throws the cat onto the bed he slept on that night and nods, satisfied, before turning back to resume his mission of locating his shoes and opening the door.

He has one shoe on when there’s a meow and he’s looking down under his raised foot to see that the same cat has returned, but now its tail is straight up and flicking against his raised thigh.

“Unbelievable,” he says, scowling. He resumes putting on his shoes and goes to open the door, but he can hardly move it without hitting the cat who has resorted to rubbing its side against the edge of the door. “I command you to move.”

The cat doesn’t seem to take directions well. “I have a very important meeting to make and your insolence is hindering my progress.”

Nothing.

Damian has to resort to putting the front of his foot underneath the belly of the cat and lifting it just the slightest bit so that he can move it a foot away. He will forever refuse to admit that he ran out the door before the cat could follow.

He can’t help pausing at the bottom of hotel that sits beneath the penthouse once he steps outside of the elevator, however. It’s busy, busier than he would have expected for a Wednesday morning. Everyone moves as if they have a purpose, all engaged in some sort of conversation, whether on the phone or each other. Damian is the only one standing still. He has a purpose. He has a place to be. But right here and now, he suddenly feels like an outsider. Damian is unfamiliar with this city, with the world these people are so involved in, everyone in their place, all gears working as one large machine. A machine Damian has no part in.

Damian isn’t sure what, in the end, possesses him to turn back around and go up the elevator again. He hadn’t had a key to lock the door so it opens when he gently turns the knob, and everything is exactly as he had left it, undisturbed by his absence or by the hustle and bustle of resuming world down below, including the cat. It looks up from where it’s sprawled, once again in the same place Damian had first found it in, but rises when it sees Damian and saunters over to greet him. He closes the door and looks down at it looking back up at him.

“Petulant beast,” he mutters, before bending down to lift it up. He supports its legs this time and it seems to appreciate that, setting its paws on his shoulders. He kicks off his shoes, nudging them to exactly how they were originally located, and returns to the room.

  
  
  
  



End file.
